


to live what was not life

by purrfectj



Series: resign yourself to the influence of the earth [8]
Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game), Walden - Henry David Thoreau
Genre: Death, F/M, Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire, Grief, Shakespeare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purrfectj/pseuds/purrfectj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tess loses someone dear to her and gets mired in a bog of feelings. Things are not what they seem but can Harvey understand? Pam teases and Sebastian cares.</p>
<p>This is part 8 of a many-part series exploring Stardew Valley, its inhabitants, and its newest addition, a female farmer named Tess. It's written in present tense and is rooted in my love for the farm where I grew up and my lifelong love affair with Henry David Thoreau's Walden: Or, Life in the Woods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to live what was not life

**Author's Note:**

> Shakespeare poem [Fear No More](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fear-no-more/).
> 
> John "Lucky" Garnett played by the amazing Fred Astaire in [Swing Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_Time/) with the incomparable Ginger Rogers as Penelope "Penny" Carroll.
> 
> Sebastian sings [A Fine Romance](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRqK-KxNLAY) from Swing Time, music and lyrics by Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields.

Shep is devoured as the sweltering, oppressive heat of summer snaps its jaws around the mild, wet spring. It is Link who leads her to the handful of speckled feathers, nature red in tooth and claw and entrails, Link who supports her as she sinks down onto the ground to mourn her poorest layer but sweetest hen, Link who whines and stands sentinel as she spreads her fingers out over the dusty ground, digging into the dirt, ragged nails, ragged girl, ragged pain, ragged breaths as she digs and digs until she can deposit what is left of her lost one into the jagged pit of her own guilt: it is Tess who has left the coop unguarded and defenseless. 

Grief lives here, in a grave over which she carefully plants scarlet hen and chicks, _sempervivum_ ‘Ruby Heart’; in a fanciful jeweled box that plays a song from childhood, _celesta_ Tchaikovsky; in the shrine she’s only recently uncovered on the far northwestern corner of the farm, _morte_ grandfather. 

There is no absolution to be found in the hack, slash, loot of the mines, in the cast, reel, wet of the water, in the whack, thump, crash of the trees, in the burn, hiss, warmth of the tequila in the bottle Gus obligingly leaves alongside the shot glass, lime wedges, and salt shaker on her table when she asks. She’s lost count of how many she’s had, one tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor, and she’s giggling or crying or maybe just drooling when Pam, a local with a taste for drink, plops down at the table and takes a shot straight from the bottle. 

“Shit, ta keel ya is right,” she grunts, rattling the table with the force of her laugh, and Tess peers up at her through a curtain of the sable brown hair she’s left down, rioting not quite as much in the humidity as Pam’s bottle-blonde ‘do but close, sticking to her sweaty forehead in ropes and tickling her eyelashes, and she makes a noise that could be agreement, could be denial, and is really just a fuck off. Pam, who in the past has ignored most of Tess’s attempts to be friendly, just flicks her fingers at the dismissal and pulls out an old-fashioned filigreed silver lighter and an actual cigarette case, navigating them both carefully with her deadly, pointed French manicure. She purses her painted lips and blows elegant smoke rings at odds with her garish robin’s egg blue eyeshadow and Tess sinks lower on her spine, propping her booted feet up on the chair across from her, not sure what to do with her arms or her hands or her face now that she isn’t drinking. “What’s got yer panties in a twist, farmgirl?” 

_‘Consign to thee, and come to dust’_ is what she wants to say but that’s not polite dinner conversation much less what you say to a fellow drunk at whatever the fuck o’clock it is in this hole-in-the-wall shitstain of a pub and god, why did she stop drinking again? So Tess just jerks a shoulder and drops her head back, the chair hard and unforgiving and chilly against her nape, the ceiling lined in pretty silver hammered tin spinning lazily, and she might pass out for a couple of minutes or an hour or for a day if it weren’t for the pale, upside down face, crowned by unruly raven’s black hair and unsmiling eyes the color of rich, dark chocolate that swims into focus, the thin, never smiling mouth somehow softening as she tilts this way and that and squints to see him better. “Sebastian?” 

“Yeah.” It’s all he says, his breath tickling her chin, and she waits expectantly for more from the taciturn and abrupt computer programmer who lives in the basement of his mother and step-father’s house and smokes a joint almost every night out by the lake near the mine. She knows this because the perfume of it drew her to him, musk and dusk filling her lungs, the almost-forgotten scent of the tiny dorm room with the world-weary roommate who just could not believe she’d been stuck with such a goody-goody, god, what a bitch that you won’t let me smoke in here, and Tess had discovered quickly that it was better to just go with the flow, man. 

To this day, she thinks of Aubrey with a mixture of frustration and guilt and regret that smells like Sebastian’s clothes as they lay in the grass by the water and listen to the frogs’ croak and to the crickets’ chirp and to the water’s burble, a backwoods song. 

“Bas?” she prods when he crouches down next to her, propping his chin on her shoulder, and his laugh is fog and the slow fire of the tequila in her belly, deep and sinful. 

“Tess,” he says and brushes his cool, dry lips over her cheek. “Let’s get you home.” 

“Home is where it hurts,” she murmurs into his bicep as he helps her to her feet and cradles her gently against him when she sways, almost like they’re dancing, and she lets him lead, shuffle, shuffle, step, glide, and she hears him make another of those chuckles deep in his chest that’s good enough to eat when she mutters, “You’re no Lucky, Bas.” 

“A fine romance, my good woman, my strong, aged-in-the-wood woman,” he hums into her hair, a surprising and kindred spirit who wasn’t afraid to curl up with her and watch old dancing movies, and so they do, late at night sneaking into his room reeking and giggling like schoolchildren, the glow of the computer screen bathing them in artificial cheer, and Tess snuggles closer, burying her nose in the curve of his collarbone and her fingertips hooking into the belt loops of his jeans over the non-existent bumps of his hipbones, and his breath hitches and sighs out. “Tess,” he says, again, quieter, wary and weary, and she lifts her head to find he isn’t looking down at her but over her shoulder at something in the still, moonless night. 

Before she turns, her heart gives a wild, erratic jerk and she groans, a wounded wild animal, and Sebastian is a solid, slender comfort at her back as she step, step, spins to face the music and Harvey’s carefully neutral expression. He is judging her and it stings, judging her as she is not allowed to judge him, red-faced and sweaty stumbling from Pierre’s great room after aerobics with the older female population of Pelican Town, a towel around his neck, a sweatband holding back the waves of his hair, smelling of pheromones and apology and fear as she stares at him, wide-eyed and trying not to laugh or smash her mouth against his, their friendship tenuous yet and built on a shaky foundation of her support of his lectures on health to George and how his hands continue to feel, patching up her skin and monitoring her temperature and checking the heartbeat thundering beneath her breast, _it beats for you._

Built on sitting under a tree by the sluggish river as it flows through town, not speaking, and Tess has the absolute, terrible, worst realization that she dreams of drowning so often because every man she considers friend meets her on the bank of some turbulent body of water. “Fuck my life,” she says, sagging back into Sebastian as Harvey cha-chas away as fast as he can, shoulders stiff. 

Sebastian tucks her into her bed tenderly as if she is his half-sister Maru, brushes another of those kisses on her cheek that means she’s important to him, and shakes his head lightly when she asks him to stay. “You’ll not want me here,” he whispers and is gone, the door closing behind him as Shep curls up on his rug by the bed and huffs out a sigh. 

Grief lives here, in a heart that yearns and hopes and wishes, in the stumbling crawl to the toilet through alternating soothing shadow and harsh sunlight where Tess heaves up what little she’s eaten in the past days of toil and drink and burial, in the gentle weight of Link at her hip, his muzzle laid across her back in comfort and solidarity, in a heart that wishes it could _fear no more_. 

Grief lives here. 


End file.
